The Devil Came Up from Georgia

Summary: When Garrett Easterly woke up dead in Purgatory, he still didn't believe. With his soul to lose and an assortment of deadly allies at his back, it's a take-no-prisoners fight for self and humanity.

Chapter 1

Garrett Easterly leaned heavily against the wall, pressing
the entire left side of his face against the cool surface. He had bright spots
flashing in the center of his eyes, making his head pound and his stomach roll.
He thought that maybe his breakfast from four days ago was going to make an
appearance, but he wasn’t sure if a dead person could vomit.

“If you had
listened to me, none of this would have happened!” A loud, rather authoritarian
voice said behind them. Some one pushed against his shoulder and he stumbled,
falling down to his knees in the middle of someone’s entrains. Something’s.

Garrett
kept his eyes closed. His world was still spinning and he wasn’t sure of what
he feared most at this time. Maybe this was him tripping again, one really bad
trip from those mushrooms he’d eaten even though he knew he could be called in
at anytime. His C.O. would kill him for this one.

Or maybe it
wasn’t a drug-induced hallucination at all and he was really, truly dead. Stuck
in Purgatory, paying for the sins he’d committed during his thirty-four years
of life.

“Get off
your knees, Easterly. You’re making me look bad.” One small hand closed around
the back of his neck and yanked him clear up to his feet. His eyes opened, only
to focus on a blunt green stare. “We’ve got move or they’ll catch up to us. Do
you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Good.
Move.”

As it had
turned out, he didn’t know shit about Hell. At least not this physical Hell.
He’d gotten close and personal with his inner demons before, but never before
had he watched one be gutted from skull to stomach. The stench of the
seven-legged creature and the slight of blood the color of puss seeping out of
its flesh was more than even a hardened soldier could take.

“That’s
what we call a uli. He was a human,
at some point. But time in Purgatory has let his true nature show. And that
motherfucker was ugly on inside, see?”

The
woman—was she a woman?—kicked the dead creature as she stepped over it. Her
short, straight red hair bounced as she scrapped the soles of her combat boots to
the cement floor to clean it. She
sheathed her sword and frowned down at the creature.

“You know,
these past seventy something years, human nature has gotten uglier and uglier.
Back in my day, when souls spent time in Purgatory, even the evil ones, they
were still beautiful. My personal opinion is that the bad guys these days are
doing it just for the money. Greed is an ugly bitch, I tell you. And for some
reference, greed would have also killed you if you hadn’t overdosed first.”

Her name
was Eloa.

That’s what
she’d told him when he’d woken up in an alleyway, somewhere in a place that
looked a lot like Atlanta but without the heat or the people. It was gray,
everywhere he looked, everything was gray.

“So, as I
was saying,” she said in an accent he couldn’t place, “you’re dead. Sorry.”

Dead.

Not by
enemy bullets in the middle of Afghanistan, not because he drove drunk every
other night of the week but because the drugs finally got to him. And his drug
dealer, apparently.

“This is
Purgatory, a place where sinners like your self hangout while trying to make up
for the shitty decisions you made while you were still kicking it,” Eloa said
over her shoulder as she led the way down the gloomy street. She poked her head
around the corner. “This place does weird shit to souls, man. Sure, a lot of
you find salvation after doing your time, but some one you end up like
puss-head over there. Like, real, really, forever dead.”

“Not hell?”
It was the only few words he’d managed to actually say to her. He was too
confused by all of this, too frightened of the things he’d seeing since dying
to truly process the fact that he was dead.

“Hell? Nah,
Hell’s for the big dogs. We’re talking like, demons of destruction and all sorts of ugliness, not these lowlifes.“

She waved
him forward. Something about the way she moved reminded him of his fellow
Special Ops brothers. She had training, she knew was she was doing as she
walked around the corner and walked down the street.

“Where we going?”

“Well, I’m
going back to HQ. That’s where we operate from.”

“We?”

“I can’t
tell if you’re dense or if I’m making this very hard for you,” Eloa mumbled
under her breath. “You don’t think I’m the only one fighting for human kind, do
you? That would be fucking idiotic of me. There’re hundreds of us.”

“What
exactly are you?”

She led
them across Marietta Street. “That’s a very personal question, which I’ll
forgive you for asking since you are obviously distraught by the things going
on around you right now. But in general, we are the ones responsible for
keeping the bad guys from destroying humanity as you know it. The doors to HQ
move around, which keeps the souls trapped in Purgatory from flooding our
office and also because otherwise we’d be overrun by demons trying to get into
the Higher Place, yeah?”

She ran
down another street and then ducked into an alley. Garrett followed after her.
“So I get to go to HQ?”

“Maybe. You
see, when I rolled out of bed this morning, your face was the first thing I saw
in my mind. And that tells me someone up there wants you on our side,” Eloa said.
She looked at him and for a moment he thought she had the eyes of a cat. “You
poor bastard. You die an painful death and you get picked by the assholes upstairs.”

“You mean
God?”

“God?” She
looked at him as if he were the dumbass fucker who’d ever walked the Earth.
“God?! You think He doesn’t anything better to do than waste his time on you?
Come on, man! God is busy, okay? He’s got lots going on and honestly, you and
I, and people like us, we need to figure out our shit on our own.”

“So who
sent you?”

“Best guess
is one of the Archangels. They are the ones always trying to save people. Can’t
help themselves.” She looked around. “There’s a CVS around here somewhere. The
men’s bathroom door is the way out of this shit hole.”

“Why me?”

Eloa was
leading the way again, halting for a second when a ragged woman crossed their
path. She didn't look like the first monster Eloa had saved him from. She still looked normal, maybe too dead tired and dirty, but at least still human.

She made eye contact with him, those sad, dead eyes staring at him as she recognized herself in his form.

Eloa shook her head at the woman, reaching out to stop the woman from coming near them. “I’m sorry, sister, but
you can’t come with us.”

The woman
gave her one soft, long nod and shuffled on, bent and wrapped around herself.

Garrett
followed her with his eyes. “Why me? Why not her?”

Eloa
stopped again, looking annoyed as she turned to look at him. After a few second, she shrugged. “I don’t
know. I don’t get to make the rules and I don’t get to choose. My job is to
find people like you and bring you back to the fight.”

“I’ve been
fighting my whole life.” Ever since he’d come out of his mother’s womb, he’d
been fighting to stay alive, fighting for country, fighting to eat, to breath,
to not lose himself until he had. He’d been fighting and he was tired of it.

“Yeah, but
have you ever fought for your soul?” She asked softly. Pushing her red hair
away from her glossy lips, Eloa waved to the gloom around them. “You’re here
because you fucked up, Garrett Easterly. It wasn’t just the drugs, you know, or
the prostitutes, or the drinking, or even the lives you took in war. It’s
because of the whole picture, it’s because you gave up on yourself. Someone up
there is trying to give you the chance to fight for a resting place for your
troubled soul. It’s up to you whether you take it or not. Come on, we’re moving
slower than molasses and I hate Purgatory.”

They ran
several more streets before she stopped them again to listen.

“So if I
fight for you against these bad guys you’re talking about, I get to do to
Heaven?”

“That’s the
general picture, give or take several decades, maybe hundreds, maybe even a
millennia. If you don’t die, of course, cause then your soul truly seizes to
exist and that’s a fate worse than any other. No reincarnation, no peaceful
rest, no nothing.”

They
rounded a final corner and just across the street was the CVS she’d spoken
about. His dead heart skipped a beat.

"Can we take the lady too?”

"No.” She glanced at him before she took off in the direction of the pharmacy,
faster than any human he’d ever seen. He didn’t keep up, couldn’t even if he
tried, but she kept on him, and on their surroundings as he joined her by the
doors. “Listen, rookie, this isn't my first rodeo, okay? I've tried taking others that weren't chosen through the doors and they can't. That's just how it works, alright. You got picked. You were a warrior and we need warriors. What do you think is the use of taking civilians into a battle zone, huh?"

She opened
the door and went it first, pulling the sword from her waist and holding it in
front of her like a person used to handling this weapon. He kept as close to her as he. He had no
weapon, and although he could easily kill with his hands, he had a feeling none
of these creatures were so easily taken down.

Eloa
sidestepped quietly to the side, her eyes scanning the deserted aisles until
they stood in the little nook that led to both bathrooms. He froze as she set her palm to the door.

“What if I
don’t want to go?” He asked as he looked at that sign glued to the door.

Eloa
shrugged. “You don’t have to. We’re all big on free will. But what do you have
going on for you here, Garrett? You’re dead, everyone on this plane is also
dead and just waiting around for Apocalypse. Is that what you thought you
wanted for yourself when you joined the Navy? When you became a Special Ops?
Way before your drug problem and your nightmares, you wanted to be good. Don’t
you remember that? We’re just trying to give you that choice.”

She pointed
at the door. “On the other side are people just like you, trying to fight for
those who deserve it and who need it. Whether you come with me or not is up to
you, but I’m not going to wait around for you to decide. Not with that hungry
fucker standing there.”

She pointed
over his shoulder and Garrett spun around to see a man, half decomposed, with
fangs as long as arms. He shuffled towards him, and he would have been faster
if his legs hadn’t been broken at least twice before.

“You want
to be like him? Cause I assure that one hundred years from now when you've had nothing but your sins to think of, that's a pretty good idea of what you'll become. There's no Wi-Fi in Purgatory. No Netflix either.”

“I don’t
even know how you are. Who do you work for? Who and what are we fighting? How do you know not existing at all is a fate worse than being here? Or with you?"

She smiled
sadly at him. “My name is Eloa. That’s more than I got out anyone else.”

Garrett
chose out of his free will to step through the door.

Write a Review
Did you enjoy my story? Please let me know what you think by leaving a review! Thanks,
Mandy Smith

Lydia Walters:
I really enjoyed this novel. It gives us a view of what could be if we really tried.Also that there's nothing wrong with loving our LORD and our fellow humans. couldn't wait to get to each new chapter (mission). Thanks, Joe!

Ruby O'Keeffe:
I'm only a few chapters in and I love this book! The writing style fits the setting and theme perfectly, and the descriptions of the characters, setting and more are beautiful! I would love to read to read more from this author!

Marijana1:
The melancholy present throughout this story has the power to influence and etch into the minds of the readers, to stay there and refuse to leave even after they have finished reading the story. This is a deep, powerful story, making the readers wonder about everything – about love, about their e...

William Elliott Kern:
Interesting Story, with Jacob, the second Son of Baron Ironwood to learn his duties, provide his numbers and prepare for marriage to Anna......Along the way, the wise Monk, Francis came to Ironwood, filled the ears of Jacob with hope and positive direction, a gift for Jacob well needed. The Stor...

KerryMI:
One would think the idea of vampire loving man has been over flogged, yet this story's fresh perspective on Vampires, how they live and how they connect with humans is so effortlessly narrated that it almost becomes truth. Your writing was fast enough to keep me greedily turning each page but slo...

Lauren Kabanyana:
It's simply amazing, the story is touching and has you captivated while reading! I loved it! Would read it over and over again. I applaud the way this book was able to evoke a mixture of feelings. I felt everything the two main characters felt from the start to end, i would recommend this novel t...

bloodrosemaiden:
I love this book!! I have read it several times and though there could be improvements I applaud the author. I know positive feed back is appreciated!! I enjoy reading about the learning the different character's backstories, and the affects in the overall story!

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